Married to the Marquess

by Rebecca Connolly

  It took Kate’s mind a considerable amount of time to process what Derek had said. She was still so pleasantly frazzled by his kisses that coherency was limited and slow.

  David? David who? Then she remembered.

  “Your brother?” she said at last, trying desperately to hide her frantic panting. “What could he want?”

  “Nothing good, I am fairly certain.” He sighed, pressed a quick, but no less heated kiss to her lips and pulled back. “This will not take long,” he promised as he stood.

  “How do you know?” she asked with an amused smile.

  “I will make sure it does not.” He gave her a look that sent a sort of fiery chill racing up Kate’s spine, then turned and headed for the door where Harville was preparing to open it. At Derek’s nod, he did so, and though Kate couldn’t see him, she could tell that David’s appearance was not a pleasant sight.

  Derek’s brows shot up and a frown formed. “David.”

  “Derek, it is sooooo good to shee you,” came a slurring, drawling voice that sounded very much like David, but at the same time, was so unlike his usual tone and manner that she had a hard time believing it actually was David.

  Curious, she rose from the sofa and peeked around the corner. The normally so dapper and dashing Lord David Chambers looked more like a peddler who was dressed in fine clothing rather than someone who belonged in them. His hair was rumpled and disorderly, his clothing stained and disheveled, his jaw scruffy, and his eyes bloodshot.

  In short, Lord David was exceptionally inebriated.

  “Helloooooo there, Katherine,” he drawled as he saw her, turning to bow clumsily, and losing his balance. Derek caught his arm before he fell to the floor, but not before Kate got a face full of alcohol laced breath.

  “Hello, Lord David,” she coughed, taking a measured step back, but smiling with a bit of amusement. She ought to be offended and affronted and appalled, but having never been within fifty meters from someone so drunk before, she found that she was just terribly fascinated and wanted to laugh.

  David grunted as his brother shifted him into a more secure hold, and gave Kate a bleary look. “Didjoo know that Derek calls you Kate?” he asked, snickering stupidly.

  “Yes, I did, actually,” Kate answered, still smiling. “You can too, if you would like.”

  David looked startled, then squinted up at his brother, who was starting to struggle under the deadweight in his arms. “Waaaaaiiiiiit, she lets you call her Kate?”

  “Yes, David, she does,” Derek sighed, rapidly losing patience, though he was smiling still.

  David frowned and tried to stand on his own, but only managed to stumble more fully into his brother’s grasp. “Derek, you are a liar,” David announced, swaying dangerously as he tried to point a finger up at him. “Sheeee is no devil. She’s an annnnnnnngel.”

  “Yes, thank you, David,” Derek said loudly, his cheeks coloring. He looked over at her and mouthed “I am so sorry” with a wince.

  Kate grinned at him and his reaction. It no longer bothered her that Derek had once upon a time been critical of her and had called her names behind her back and whatever else he might have done. She had done the same thing with him. They were both different now, and things had changed.

  “My lord, what brings you to our humble abode?” Kate asked him, stepping closer.

  “So polite, sooooooooo pretty,” David crooned as he looked at her. “Did you do something different with your hair, Kate? It’s all falling down and pretty and sensual and…”

  “Stop trying to flirt with my wife and answer the question, would you, David? I have no trouble dropping you and leaving you on the doorstep,” Derek barked, losing his smile.

  “You sound like our beloved father did only this afternoon,” David remarked, snarling and looking as though he would like to spit.

  “Don’t spit,” Derek warned, and Kate was amused that their thoughts had been so in line. “So all of this was brought on by another lecture from our father?”

  David shook his head, which made both him and Derek sway. “A threat.”

  “A threat?”

  He nodded. “‘Either you find a wife in the next month or I will find one for you’,” he said, taking his voice deeper to attempt to sound like his father, though he failed. “It sheeems I am to be married soon, Derek, whether I like it or not.”

  Derek groaned and shook his head. “All right, all right, we’ll figure something out. We will keep you here tonight,” he paused and looked at Kate, who nodded in confirmation, “and then you and I will go see Diana tomorrow when you have sobered up.”

  “If you don’t mind,” Kate interrupted gently, “I would like to go check on Alice and then go to bed.”

  “I can take you up,” Derek said immediately.

  She shook her head, looking at her husband. “You have your hands quite full. I’ll be all right for one night.”

  “But…” Derek started, then bit back his reply.

  Kate knew what he was going to say, somehow. She smiled softly at him, and eventually, he returned it. Her heart warmed and her toes curled at that smile, so full of promise and meaning. She wished they hadn’t been interrupted. She wished the night could have gone on forever as it had been. She wished…

  “Alish is here?” David broke in, destroying the moment yet again. “I love that sweet baby Alish! Can I see her?”

  “Tomorrow,” Derek growled, hefting his brother’s arm over his shoulder. “Tomorrow you can see her. When you are a better example.”

  “I am always a good egggsample,” David slurred defensively as Kate headed up the stairs.

  “Of course you are,” Derek assured him sarcastically as they awkwardly followed her.

  Derek was quite certain the morning sun had never been so bright, and he had never been so delighted about it. David was miserable, fumbling along behind him, muttering oaths and curses against his brother’s need to walk everywhere when a perfectly good carriage was at his disposal.

  Derek did not feel the need to walk everywhere, really; he merely thought it was a good idea most of the time.

  Today was one of those times.

  Due to his unnatural ability to only sleep during dark hours, the very grumpy David woke with a raging headache and barged into the breakfast room, where Derek, Kate, Jessie, and Alice already were. He had not said a word, only spoke in grunts, but Derek, having spent a few too many mornings with violent headaches, bloodshot eyes, and limited vocabulary in his wilder youth, was able to provide adequate translation.

  The only thing that seemed to brighten David’s foul mood was when he caught sight of Alice. Incredibly, a smile crossed his face and he seemed in far less pain than he had been moments before. He changed direction and immediately took the happily chattering girl from her nursemaid’s hold. After several rather noisy, slobbering kisses that made Alice squeal, David handed her back to Jessie, who was trying not to laugh herself, and then sat down and silently inhaled his meal.

  When Derek had inquired as to whether or not David was ready enough to see their sister, he had merely nodded and left the room. Pressing a light kiss to his wife’s hand, Derek followed and smirked at the moaning that reached his ears when the door was opened.

  Now they were nearly to Diana’s house and soon enough, they would be well on their way to a solution, preferably one that did not involve Derek having to explain to his father why he was not going to marry off his brother to the first available heiress they could find.

  “I thought I told you to send a note from now on!” came half irritated, half amused voice from above them.

  Peering up, Derek grinned at the form of his sister, leaning rather precariously out of a window.

  “Does your husband know you lean out of windows like that?” he called up in response.

  “Stop shouting!” David groaned, putting a hand to his head.

  “Oh my.” Diana winced. “Rule Ten?”

  “Among others, I expect,” Derek sighed, lo
oking over at David, then back up at his sister. “We have got a serious situation, Di.”

  “I suspected we might. Come on in, I shall be right down.”

  Within moments, the three siblings were seated in the front drawing room, and Diana had ordered light refreshment and tea for her and Derek, and a cold compress for David’s throbbing head. When the maid brought it in, Diana took the compress and laid it across David’s eyes, and sighed. “Honestly, David, are you determined to break every single one of those rules?”

  “No,” he said stubbornly as he looked at her from under the compress. He grimaced and put his hand on top of the cloth and leaned back. “Just most of them.”

  “Imagine that,” Derek remarked with a smile.

  “I have a few that I like,” David brought up with a finger. “Rule Eighteen being the primary.”

  Derek thought back for a moment. “Always dance with a wallflower?”

  David nodded, his wild grin the only part of his expression any of them could see. “It’s probably the best part of the night, when I do that. They don’t care that I’m wealthy or the son of a duke, and they don’t ever think that I am going to propose matrimony. I have the best conversations with wallflowers.”

  “Well, hurrah for you,” Diana snorted, sipping her tea. “But what about the rest of the rules?”

  “I always carry a handkerchief, I always wear gloves… in public, and I always change for meals.” David shrugged, then groaned at the motion. “Other than that, I see no reason to have the rules at all.”

  The two remaining Chambers siblings looked at each other and shook their heads, both smiling. David had always been the most outspoken of the three of them, and in adulthood he was only growing more so. But one could not help loving him regardless.

  Well, maybe one.

  Derek sighed and told Diana what David had let slip the night before, with some now sober clarification and elaboration from David himself. The frown that formed on Diana’s face was so impressive and imposing that Derek suddenly knew whom she had learned it from. It was the very image of their father, and it had the same effect.

  “I do not understand that man,” she muttered as they finished the story. “As if David would marry a milkmaid or a courtesan.”

  “I might,” David said with a grin, “if she were pretty enough and had the requisite intellect.”

  “The point is,” Diana overrode loudly, giving her younger brother a look, “that our father should trust David to behave with as much respect as he does the rest of us, especially where his marriage is concerned.”

  “I agree,” Derek sighed as he reached for a biscuit. “But he is immovable. He is determined that David be married soon and that his wife meets all of the necessary criteria,” he broke off with a snort and shook his head.

  “I don’t want to get married now, I am not ready to get married now, and I will marry my choice, not his,” David announced from his semi-recumbent position on the sofa.

  “We know,” Diana soothed with a slight roll of her eyes. “If we have learned anything from Derek’s example, it is that there is great danger in marrying early and to a person of someone else’s choosing.”

  “Yes,” Derek murmured, thinking back on his wedding day, on his life up to this point, on the very subject of his wife. “But it turns out I may have been fortunate after all.”

  “Apparently,” Diana agreed with a grin. “But it did take a while. And David is not nearly so open.”

  “I beg your pardon!” David protested, sitting up slightly.

  Diana rolled her eyes again. “Oh, please. Mountains are more movable than you are. At any rate, I think you will need to get out of England for a while. Explore the continent; get all that wicked wildness out of you.” She grinned mischievously. “You know, get your priorities aligned.”

  “I am all for it,” David said, returning her grin with one of his own in spite of his headache.

  “It will never work,” Derek told them both, shaking his head. “The duke will not allow it.”

  “He will when I tell him that his first grandchild is expected to arrive in about six months,” Diana muttered darkly, still smiling. “That should get the old codger to shift his stance.”

  It took a good half of a minute for either brother to react, and then it took another three minutes or so to calm them down. Even David, with his raging headache, shouted out his jubilation and even went so far as to leave the sofa and race over to give Diana a hug, while Derek merely maintained his position, and grinned broadly.

  Diana beamed under their attention, and thanked them, then waved David away like an irritating insect. His headache apparently returned, for he gingerly excused himself from the room, taking his compress with him.

  “So help me, Derek, if I find anything resembling regurgitated remains of breakfast in my house, I am marching over to your house and dragging you back here to clean it up.”

  Derek grinned. “Oh, don’t worry about that. He is only going to sleep it off somewhere. Would you mind very much housing him until he is able to take care of himself again? I would, but… I am… that is to say, Kate and I…”

  “Yes, Derek, he can stay,” Diana interrupted gently, smiling. “You are quite occupied at the moment, aren’t you?”

  He nodded, not seeing any need to expound further.

  “How are things?” she asked quietly, watching him with curious, but kind eyes.

  He hesitated for a moment, not because he did not want to share with her, because he did. He and Diana had always had a special bond, and they always told each other everything, things they never shared with other people. It had been suggested that they were actually twins, but given the year’s gap between them, it was obviously not true. They were just that close.

  No, he hesitated because he had no idea how to respond, how to define what he was feeling.

  “I think…” he began slowly, choosing his words with great caution, “I think I might be…” He couldn’t say it, he could not define it as such yet. There was too much uncertainty, too much unknown.

  “You might be what?”

  Of course, Diana would not let things go so easily. There was nothing for it. “I think I might be falling in love with her.”

  Thankfully, Diana’s reaction to his admission was far more reserved than his and David’s had been to hers. She said nothing, did not even squeak or shift. More than a little unnerved, and wondering if she were alive and breathing, he looked up, only to find her eyes swimming in tears. Oh dear. That was not good.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, wiping at her eyes, and laughing a little. “Ridiculous, I know, but I have been so emotional lately, and I never expected to hear you say that.” She sniffed into her handkerchief.

  “Nor did I.”

  “You need to leave.”

  “What?” he cried, looking back up at her.

  “Sorry, I mean you need to go back home. Go be with her, find out if you really are in love with your wife. Spend time with her, court her, lose yourself in her. You cannot figure this out if you are here, Derek. You need to leave.”

  “All right,” he said hurriedly, getting up, but still watching her with concern as the tears continued to course down her cheeks. His sister rarely lost control of her emotions, and the idea that he was the cause of this sudden break in control was not only disconcerting, but worrisome. If Edward should find out that Derek had made her cry, he would lose the function of his lower half.

  “Go. Go now,” Diana urged, waving him out as she dabbed at her cheeks.

  “Are you going to be…?”

  “I am fine, Derek,” Diana barked. “Go!”

  “All right, all right,” he replied, holding up his hands in surrender. “I’m leaving.”

  And he did, but with heavy reservations. The whole walk back to his home, he wondered at her words, at his words, at his own thoughts. Was he in love with Kate? It was possible. It was quite probable, actually. He was certainly growing more and mor
e fond of her as the days wore on. He had promised to stay for two weeks, and now he couldn’t even think of leaving. He wanted nothing more than to stay and explore these new emotions; he wanted to understand his wife more clearly; he wanted to understand himself more clearly.

  Because never had he been more confused about the man he was than right now.

  Before he was aware of it, he was standing in his own entryway, handing his hat and gloves to Harville. “Where is Lady Whitlock?”

  “The drawing room, my lord. I am afraid she is a little down at the moment, sir. Lady Aurelia came by this morning and has taken Miss Jessie and little Alice back home. We are all a bit forlorn about it.” In truth, the butler did look a little older at the present.

  Derek smiled a touch. “I can imagine. Thank you, Harville.” He went in to the drawing room, and Kate, though happy to see him, did look sad.

  When he asked about it, she hesitated, but thanks to his uncanny ability to prod information out of people, she eventually sighed, and said, “I miss Alice.”

  He nodded. “So do I. But you may call me a brute when I tell you that part of me is relieved to have her returned to her home.”

  “What?” she cried. “How can you say that?”

  “Because now I have you all to myself again. I love Alice dearly, you know that, but when she was here, you spent most of your time with her, and while I can hardly blame you for that, I was profoundly jealous of my beautiful niece.”

  “You were?” she asked with a small smile.

  “Mmhmm,” he said with a nod, shrugging. “I missed you.”

  “I was right here.”

  “I missed you.”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it again. Then she stood and walked over to where he was, still leaning against the fireplace, and wrapped her arms around his waist, laying her head against his chest.

  Finding breathing and swallowing a trifle difficult with the sudden lump in his throat, Derek put his arms about her and held her to him. “What is this for?” he asked softly, his voice surprisingly raw.

  “That was the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,” she told him, nuzzling against him ever so slightly. “I… I missed you, too.”